The Brandt was in luck at last. A few days of dredging along Hoopers, and, by the early part of December, she was fully laden. There were a thousand and more bushels of good oysters in her hold. The time for the ending of the first trip was nigh.
Jack Harvey slapped his friend, Edwards, on the shoulder.
“We’ve stuck it out, old chap,” he said, “and we’re alive to tell the tale, in spite of Haley. We’ll get back inside of the month. There’s one thing that that scoundrel, Jenkins, didn’t lie about. Hooray! Why, you’re a better man than when you came aboard, Tom Edwards. You’re stronger, if we have had awful grub.”
“All the same, I’ll make it hot for old Haley, when I get ashore,” exclaimed Tom Edwards. “I’ll have the law on him for this.”
Thus they talked and planned, but said naught to the others, lest word of their contemplated revenge should get, by chance, to Haley’s ears. And then, one evening, another bug-eye hove in sight as they lay at anchor, and came alongside.
“All hands out, to unload,” called Haley.
“Look alive here,” repeated Jim Adams; “’spects we’ve got an all night job before us.”
Taken by surprise, Harvey and Tom Edwards obeyed the summons. The work they were next called upon to do dumbfounded and appalled them. With a tackle and fall attached to the mast, the work of unloading the cargo of the Brandt and transferring it to the hold of the other vessel was begun.
“What does this mean? What are they going to do? Aren’t we going up to Baltimore with our load?” inquired Harvey, falteringly, of Sam Black.
“Why, you fool, of course not,” was the reply. “Did you think you were going to quit so soon as this? Think old man Haley lets a man go when he once gets him, with men so hard to catch? Didn’t you know you were booked for all winter? Baltimore, eh? Well, when you see Baltimore, my boy, it will be when the Brandt knocks off for the season. Don’t worry, though, you’ll come through. You can stand it.”